Post-Grad Dating Part 2: More Statistics than You'll Ever Care to Know

Someone on the internet suggested that I add a bunch of additional stats to that last post I wrote about my fun dating experiences, so I spent my entire Saturday night drawing pie charts.  I discovered that I'm a huge nerd when it comes to analyzing data from my love life; I got way more excited than I should have figuring all this stuff out. 

These numbers obviously aren't a super accurate reflection of my experiences, but I thought it would be a fun thing to look at given the fact that my dating spreadsheet on Google Docs is pretty much the most detailed spreadsheet I've ever created.  Why I chose dating as the part of my life in which I am the most organized, I'm still not sure.

Here are the original stats to refresh your memory: 

Total # of first dates: 42

How many turned into second + dates: 23, so about 55%. 
31% turned into 3 + ! 

Longest hang-out: 3 months 

Shortest hang-out: 1 hour

How contact was first established: 

And here are the new ones! 




What'd ya do on the first date? 

Drinking, mostly.  Upon further reflection, I think alcohol dates are fine to calm your nerves (and I got really nervous sometimes before meeting people, especially at the beginning!) but if I could do it over I would cap it at 2 drinks max.  More than that and I stopped being able to tell if I actually liked someone or if I just liked everyone because whiskey.  Don't be afraid to do something different like go to a space museum!  In fact, I would recommend it because it gives you a common experience to bond over.  I would love to bond with someone over space.

Who ended things?  

Me: 20/42

Them: 8/42

Mutual: 14/42

Why did things end? 

Honestly every case was unique so it's difficult to quantify this.  I kind of hesitated to even try because I don't want to oversimplify it, but I ended up splitting it up into these categories.

1) Boredom: our interaction lacked mental stimulation / I didn't feel excited by it.
I think some people were just not very expressive, which is a quality I possess a lot of and subsequently crave in others.  Others were straight up just not that interesting to me.

2) Not enough in common: we struggled to find things to connect on because we had significantly different interests/values.  One guy was really smart which was cool, but unfortunately his witty jokes were lost on me because they mostly related to pop culture references and I basically never watch TV or movies or listen to music.  It's a wonder anyone has things in common with me ever. 

3) No physical attraction: I was surprised by how big of a deal this ended up being.  I think unfortunately it weighs in more in this kind of setting (serial dating) because you have to decide very quickly and not going off much if you are into someone enough to keep seeing them.  A few people I had a great mental connection with so I tried to force myself to become attracted to them, but it didn't work.

4) "Just friends" vibe: I got along really well with some guys, but for some reason our relationship felt very platonic from the start.  I kissed some of these people once and it felt like I was kissing my cousin or something (yeah, but he's my first cousin). 

5) Don't click: Some guys were funny, smart, cool, and interesting, but we just weren't on the same wavelength.  This one was so sad because you want it to work so much but it doesn't; it's like smashing together two puzzle pieces as a child and your friend angrily says no those don't go together and you say yes they do and then realize that you're wrong but you don't want to admit it so you say puzzles are dumb anyway and go out to play with bugs instead.  Approximately one third of my childhood was spent playing with bugs and accidentally killing them in my eagerness to take care of them.

6) Shady: A very few people had undesirable qualities like douche-yness, aggression, and pretentiousness that I wasn't trying to mess with.  One guy was completely full of himself and I bluntly informed him of this sometime after beer #3 and then he asked for feedback afterwards, which I generously provided: 

Well I guess it was a constructive experience for him at least. Gah dating is hard work!

How did it end? 

Dating a person ended one of three ways.  

1) Through the infamous fadeaway: abandoning communication without any discussion.  Aka awkwardly replying to texts later and later until you finally stop responding, or simply never following up after the first date

2) By a talk: a scarier but more mature option, one of you confronts the other and (nicely!) verbalizes your wish to end things

3) Just friends: you became friends! 

Fadeaway: 26/42

Talk: 13/42

Just friends: 3/42

Let's take a closer look at this.

Who awkwardly faded away? 

Mutual fade: 11/26

Me: 9/26

Him: 6/26

Who ended things with a talk? 

I confronted them 11 out of the 13 talks.  I started out cowardly fading everyone out then eventually realized how shitty it was and switched to confrontations.  

Only 2 guys confronted me when they weren't feeling it, and I really appreciate them for it (one managed to do this so well with really nice compliments that I was left with a warm glow all day and had to remind myself that what actually happened was that I just got rejected).  

Was there a connection between who initiated contact and who chose to end things? 

I was going to try to analyze this, but to my dismay I realized that I technically only asked out 4 of the 42 people!  So any potential correlation between who initiated and who ended would not be statistically significant.  I totally need to get better at taking the initiative. 

What's your relationship with all these people like now?

I'd say only 3 I could safely call my friends.  I figured out the best way to classify all the others: people I have no communication at all with, and people that fall into the category of "we-can-like-each-others'-social-media-posts-sometimes-and-it's-not-weird".  

A super random chart to end this post:

I just realized that one third of everyone I met works at a big tech company. #sfproblems

Hope this was at least mildly interesting for you all!  If you know anyone who's also going through the struggles and triumphs of the post-grad single life, please feel free to share these dating posts with them.  The point of exposing all these experiences is to empower people to take charge of their own love lives.  If you're feeling like all your friends are settling down, please don't feel left out because it's awesome to be single and learn so much from the once in a lifetime experience that is serial dating!